1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a gesture recognition method and apparatus, and particularly relates to a gesture recognition method and apparatus for recognizing gestures of an operating body.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, various devices, such as household electrical appliances, personal computers, or game consoles, which may recognize gestures of a user and perform command entry corresponding to the recognition result, have become widespread.
In this kind of apparatus, the more commands there are that may be entered by gestures of a user with a hand, the more a user must memorize specific hand motions. Therefore, only simple hand motions in an upward, downward, right, or left direction or the like have been predominantly used.
With only a limited number of hand motions; however, operation of a plurality of operation target apparatuses is limited. Therefore, various techniques have been proposed in which a hand motion is combined with a sound, a line of sight, or an orientation of a face (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-163196, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-121576, and Japanese Patent Registration No. 4311190).
When an element other than gestures with a hand, such as a sound, a line of sight, or an orientation of a face, is to be a target of recognition; however, a user is forced to make complex motions, and moreover a plurality of different kinds of recognition processing need to be performed, which is disadvantageous with respect to operability, cost, and response time.